Monday, March 14, 2005

The Blackberry thumb disease

Have you noticed that you type more then you speak lately? Do your thumbs hurt? If you're sending lots of text messages, you may have the trendiest new malady: "BlackBerry thumb." Let me translate that for you: lesions of the ulnar collateral ligament of the metacarpophalangeal joint. Medical experts are concerned that repetitive use of the thumb to type out messages on BlackBerry handhelds and mobile phones will cause medical problems, including arthritis and tendonitis. Dr. Tom Lazoff, a physical medicine and rehabilitation physician with Fort Wayne Orthopedics says that thumbing could have some “painful consequences for a digit that was hardly designed for such tasks.”We have alreasy warned you when the first signs of "acute tendonitis" have been reported. “The human body was not designed to do anything highly repetitive,” he says. Excepting ucachalaka activities...of course. That's good for your health. Don't abuse though. “We are kind of designed to do multiple jobs,” he says. “Anytime you spend too much time on one thing, absolutely the joints are going to see wear and tear.” No pain no game. Remember: the pain will depend on the frequency, the duration and the intensity of their use, so the experts iterate. Lazoff says it’s possible people using sticky mobiles could develope wrist pain from holding it for long periods of time. Andrew Chadwick, director of the British RSI Association, told this to the Mirror:

We're talking about people making hundreds of tiny repeated movements as they use the mobile keypad. Because the movements are small they do not cause the blood to circulate, and that means the fingers are acting like an engine without oil.

Medical advice follows:

Do more of your typing on a keyboard, rather than on the BlackBerry itself, and if you can, use text messaging short hand so you’re not spelling out as many words.

Time to bring your laptop with you to the next hotspot and text-a-lot instead of thumbing over and over on your T9...Don't say we didn't warn ya!:)